isamizdat.tumblr.com

If anyone’s still paying attention here, the party has moved to tumblr for the most part. No offense to WordPress, who do good things. I’m just not really posting robust text blogs lately. This space may rise again and will remain…

isamizdat.tumblr.com

Academic ufology

It’s sometimes hard to explain my enduring fascination with all things ufological to those not familiar with the area (which, let’s face it, amounts to about 95% of the people I have any sort of interaction with). Still more perplexing to most is the notion that I am both open-minded and skeptical about the topic. As a matter of fact, this applies to all the paranormal, Fortean, magickal, fringe areas that I continue to be informed and fascinated by.

There is an admitted entertainment value to a lot of these areas. I am, after all, a child of the SF continuum. But the anomalous experiences I have had over the years do suggest to me that there is something more than just the trivial or entertaining at play here. At the very least, these topics lie at the borders of human psychology. Often times they hint at minds utterly different from that which most of us would classify as human.

Most sources on this topic are unfortunately marred by one or the other of the great pillars of boneheadism found in these areas. Namely, the debunkers and the true believers. Very little information coming from these two camps interests me any more.

Sure, I’ll listen ocassionally to the Coast to Coasts and watch the silly debates on Larry King. But I tire easily with these things. Occasionally I run across truly innovative and inquisitive takes on these areas that reflect my own tendencies to link everything from consciousness studies to folklore and cutting edge physics, to streams of literature, art, and music. Such an oasis would be exemplified by a recent discovery, the now defunct Magonia publication. It’s quite the gold mine of articles, thoroughly researched and with a definite academic approach to the area of ufology and Forteana.

It’s just satisfying to find such resources.

And with that, I’ll leave you with another sighting in Mexico of some strange worm-like thing expelling a little sphere. Zeta Reticulans? Folklore in the making? Garland of ballons? Who knows? It all still fascinates me.

Mushroom Magick

Via Strange Attractor, word of a gorgeous new tome for anyone’s psychedelic and visionary library.

Mushroom Magick : A Visionary Field Guide by Arik Roper, with written contributions from Erik Davis, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Gary Lincoff.

An excerpt from Erik Davis’ introduction has been posted on his blog as well.

And not entirely unrelated, here’s a Terence McKenna clip that stuck with me today, partly because I always note how people get their undies in a bunch at the thought of culture being targeted for criticism. McKenna was right on with this observation because culture is an edifice, a facade. What people seem to be objecting to is an attack on creativity and community, but if you pay attention, this is exactly what McKenna is pushing FOR, and IN SPITE OF said cultural facades.

The K Foundation Burn A Million Quid

I don’t think much commentary is necessary, (except a little background info on the K Foundation’s antics), and to say this speaks volumes for our current economic situation. Which if any of you have been paying attention has always been the same situation from time immemorial. Namely, that money is proof positive that sorcery works and has measurable consequences.

Oh yes, and the art world and it’s commodity fetishism.

Watch for Tony Wilson in part 5.

Video interlude: Ninjatune

A recent Facebook post got me thinking about the wonders of video art, and especially some of the fantastic cut-ups that the folks at Ninjatune have been responsible for over the years. Three selections:

The Herbaliser – Wall-Crawling Insect Breaks

Hexstatic – Wildstyle

Coldcut/Hexstatic – Natural Rhythm

Future history: Jeff Mills

Finally got around to reading the fantastic Jeff Mills feature in The Wire issue #300.

Excerpted & linked: “Well for me, maybe one of the most influential things that happened was during the riots in Detroit in 67. My parents decided to pack the family up and take the family out of the country because it was too violent in Detroit – it primarily happened in our neighbourhood in Detroit, where all the bombings and all the police and the army came in, and they declared martial law. You could not leave your house. It was the summertime, there was no way you could keep six kids in the house in summertime, it was just impossible. So they decided to make a vacation, and they took all the kids to Expo, in Montreal, an exhibition on Futurism – architecture, technology. And I must have been six or seven at that time.

In Detroit, you had to keep all the shades down, because there were snipers. If army men thought they saw something in the window that was pointed at him, he had the right to shoot at it. So we had to keep the shades down, in a dark house, in the middle of the summer, we had no air conditioning. There were no supermarkets, they were closed. It was like a warzone. The army was using the school ground for landing helicopters. And they were marching down the middle of our street, tanks were coming down our street, going to the worst part of the riot.

We stayed there for a few weeks. It was maybe most impactful because you go from one very bleak, very bad situation, to something very bright, very promising. For a kid, six or seven, it was like Disneyland, these big installations, big exhibition halls.”

I posted it elsewhere, but this 10 minute documentary on Underground Resistance is just perfect: via Current TV, care of The Mire – school yourselves.

“Your failed systems will be eliminated worldwide and overcome.“

Zizek @ Google

Whatever crap you were going to watch on TV just now, skip it. Slavoj Zizek covers a lot of the nebulous political territory I’ve been pondering over the last week, in his wonderfully manic way, during this October 2008 lecture for the Google authors series. Towards the end he is asked why he still considers Marxism relevant to the current political/economic situation, and his response reflects my thoughts on the matter. It’s about an hour and 17 minutes so sit back and enjoy.

Gristleizer RIP

Word today from Chris & Cosey that the last original functioning Gristleizer has passed on.

via Chris Carter’s Flicker:

“Our only (and as far as we know the last) surviving original Gristleizer died today, it was Cosey’s own model from 1977. We were about to start running some LFO test on it for Charles Howes, who is designing and making the new Gristleizer reproductions, when it spluttered and stopped working. No amount of coaxing, fiddling, tweaking, encouragement and new batteries would revive it. Pretty good going for a 32 year old hand-made unit but a sad day nevertheless…”

Boing Boing also had a collection of interviews & articles on the infamous black box not too long ago.

Stickmen

What can I say, I love dubious grainy (yet still creepy) videos of aliens. Or fairie folk, as the case may be. Se habla espanol tambien.

First spotted on Boing Boing

put the needle on the record…

When the drum beat goes like this…

I wonder how many classic breaks and samples I first heard on this song? I was eight or nine years old.